This blog entry is the fifth of an 11-part series highlighting the top 11 new features in InphoniteVoice 2012.

InphoniteVoice 2010 has an advanced rules engine that allows users to customize exactly when they want their appointment reminder calls to be delivered. Rules can be created to handle complex business problems, such as the ability to have appointment reminders sent 2 days in advance Monday through Thursday and 4 day in advance on Thursday and Friday (thus avoiding calling clients on the weekend.) Rules can also contain filters allowing you to only include a subset of data which gives you the ability to send different messages to different groups of clients. One feature that was missing from the rules was the ability to process rules differently on certain days. For example, if you wanted to make sure that InphoniteVoice did not call any clients on Christmas or Thanksgiving, you would have to either manually disable your rules for the holiday period, or make sure that your data was not imported so InphoniteVoice didn’t know about any upcoming appointments.

InphoniteVoice 2012 solves this problem by adding Rule Exceptions. Rule Exceptions allow you to create an exception that will apply to one or more rules. There are 4 different kinds of rule exceptions:

Add Days– this will add or subtract days to the date range that an X days in advance or custom schedule rule would normally process. Here are some examples:

• Thursday is Thanksgiving and we want to prevent any calls from going out on Thanksgiving and instead we want all calls to go the day before on Wednesday. To accomplish this we create a new rule exception and set “effective start date” to Thanksgiving Day and set “days to add” to “1 day earlier.” When Wednesday comes around, the rule processing engine will detect that tomorrow is a holiday and will modify the rule to be a 2-3 day rule. In that way, all appointment reminders that would normally only go out on Thursday, will now go out on Wednesday.
• This year, Christmas falls on a Wednesday and we want to call all appointments the day after Christmas on Thursday. To accomplish this we create a rule exception for Christmas and set “days to add” to “1 day later.” Since it’s set to later, when that Thursday comes, the rule processing will detect that that date was a holiday and will modify the rule to be a “1-2 day rule.” Therefore on Thursday it will deliver Friday and Saturday’s calls.

Alternate Rule– this rule exception will forward appointments that would normally match the specified day to a different rule. Alternate rule exceptions could be used if on a certain day you want to change the actual message delivered or delivery venue (primary number, mobile, etc.). If you knew that no one would be at the front desk on a given day and usually you offer the option to transfer to the front desk, you may want to use this exception. By doing this the alternate rule could refer to a different voice message to deliver, minus the option to transfer.

Auto-complete– this rule exception will match as normal; however the calls will be auto-completed with result of “Auto-Complete Exception.”

Suspend– this rule exception will prevent the matching of the rule on a given day. The effect of this is that the rules processing engine will simply ‘ignore’ any appointments that it would normally pick up. These appointments may be picked up by other rules if they apply.

It may sound complicated, but in reality it’s not. Here’s an example rule exception and I will explain how it works:

Assuming a simple 2-days in advanced rule, the above sample Rule Exception, we will call Saturday’s appointments on Wednesday instead of on Thanksgiving. Clients will be happier because they will not be pulled away from their turkey consumption to answer the phone, and you will be happier because you know that InphoniteVoice 2012 is the ultimate solution for your automated messaging needs.

If you require further help setting up these rules exceptions, please contact our technical support department at www.inphonite.com/support or create a case through your InphoniteVoice product.

Stay tuned for the next InphoniteVoice 2012 feature – New Email Features with Free Delivery.

This blog entry is the fourth of an 11-part series highlighting the top 11 new features in InphoniteVoice 2012.

As more and more companies realize the cost savings of implementing Voice over IP, it is becoming increasingly common to leverage these infrastructures by utilizing InphoniteVoice’s VoIP features. InphoniteVoice 2012 adds a new VoIP/SIP stack from PIKA that has several key enhancements:

• Adoption of industry leader RADVISION’s stack
• Flexibility with new SIP message customization mechanism 
• Registration and registrar capabilities 
• Dynamic user management 
• New SIP extensions to API
• Switching enhancements 
• Conference enhancements 
• Expanded digital transfer capabilities
• Dynamic call progress/analysis 
• Analog message waiting indication 
• Additional operating system support
• Enhancements to many of today's supported SIP features

One of the key new features of the VoIP enhancements is the adoption of industry leader RADVISION’s SIP stack. The new SIP stack will allow InphoniteVoice 2012 to integrate seamlessly with even more VoIP gateways, routers, and endpoints. RADVISION is committed to interoperability; here is a quote from their web site:

“Interoperability is a top priority in all of RADVISION’s products and solutions, and the company takes a proactive approach to the subject on many levels. Rather than just carrying out interoperability testing after customers request it, RADVISION actively promotes and works to achieve industry-wide interoperability. From lab testing, hosting international interoperability events and affecting standardization revisions to improve interoperability – RADVISION does it all.”

In addition, InphoniteVoice 2012 now supports the following operating systems for both PIKA HMP hardware and VoIP installations:

• Windows 7 (32 and 64-bit)
• Windows 2008 R2 (64-bit)
• Windows XP (32-bit)
• Windows 2003 R2 (32-bit)

For full details on operating system support, please see the InphoniteVoice 2012 technical specification.

Stay tuned for the next InphoniteVoice 2012 feature – Holiday Exception Handling.

This blog entry is the third of an 11-part series highlighting the top 11 new features in InphoniteVoice 2012.

InphoniteVoice 2010 R2 added the ability for your clients to call into the InphoniteVoice system and confidentially retrieve lab results or other personal information.  InphoniteVoice 2012 takes this a step further by allowing your clients to access the same information via the internet. Coupling this with InphoniteVoice's strong outbound notification capability, you can quickly create a scenario where you send an email or text message notifying your clients of a new lab result, and include a link to your portal where they can then confidentially pick it up.

Key features of the new Patient Portal for InphoniteVoice 2012:

• Allows clients to securely obtain lab results or personal messages
• Tracks when clients retrieve a message
• Multiple Patient Portals can get deployed on a single InphoniteVoice installation
• Each portal can be customized with custom style-sheets and graphics
• Client can see their next appointment and other relevant information
• If allowed, clients can update their password or pin and basic contact information

Studies show that patient satisfaction is at an all-time low. This is because of the lack of the communication that patients feel occurs from their doctor. Indeed most doctors don't have the ability to spend time with patients like they did years ago. Instead, a patient spends more time in a waiting room filled with crowds of people. Then, when it comes time to find out test results, they will be lucky to even receive a call back regarding their results. The onus is then put on the patient to contact the doctor and find out if everything is ok. The patients are put on hold while the records are found, they become frustrated and nervous.

Instead, with the Patient Portal for InphoniteVoice 2012 you allow patients the ability to see their results as soon as they are available. With the combination of our import/export program as well as our patient portal, you can contact patients to remind them to check their results, and have record that they have indeed received their results. Additionally, you are holding the responsibility for giving them their results and they appreciate that. The more ways you are able to communication with your patients or customers, the better your relationship with them will be. They will be happier and will be likely to continue to do business within your establishment.

Stay tuned for the next InphoniteVoice 2012 feature - VoIP Enhancements.

This blog entry is the second of an 11-part series highlighting the top 11 new features in InphoniteVoice 2012.

Text-to-speech is a necessary component of any dynamic telephone-based application. A quality text-to-speech engine allows you to quickly build dynamic and interactive voice response applications. A poor quality text-to-speech engine can be difficult to understand, which will require you to record more of the speech elements in order for the message to be delivered effectively. In InphoniteVoice 2010, we shipped the product with one text-to-speech engine, US English. While this text-to-speech engine worked well for many of our customers, there was a lot of room for improvement. InphoniteVoice 2012 introduces a new speech engine that is a dramatic improvement over any previous engine we have used. In addition to the improvements, we are including over 27 text-to-speech voices at no additional cost.

While we have taken great strides to make text-to-speech as human-like as possible, it is not, unfortunately, possible for text-to-speech to ever be as good as a creating a custom voice recording. To aide in making InphoniteVoice 2012 as ‘human’ as possible, we include over 13,000 professionally recorded names. In addition, common speech elements, such as date and time information, are also included with the product. Finally, we have made numerous improvements to the InphoniteVoice client to make it as easy as possible to create custom voice recordings while you are designing your message.

Here is the complete list of the 27 new text-to-speech voices included with InphoniteVoice 2012:

Would you like to hear a sample? I thought so. Click the link below to hear a sample, which demonstrates Zira (English-US), Hilda (Spanish-Mexico), Hazel (English-GB), Hortense (French), Hui Hui (Chinese), Haruka (Japanese), Lucia (Italian), Hedda (German), Paulina (Polish), and Elena (Russian).

InphoniteVoice 2012 takes great strides to improve the user experience by offering an improved text-to-speech engine, the ability to choose between 27 voices, and numerous improvements that eliminate the need for text-to-speech altogether. All of these new features combined make InphoniteVoice 2012 the most powerful product on the market today.

by Carly Stewart

Inphonite is proud to announce the introduction of our most advanced product yet: InphoniteVoice 2012. Along with all of the top-quality features of its predecessor, InphoniteVoice 2010, IV 2012 now has a great deal of new features for our customers to enjoy. Like its predecessor, InphoniteVoice 2012 sends your completely customized, automated messages by way of text, email, Twitter, or phone calls. Any industry may send messages in a variety of languages and in a multitude of different ways. This process, however, is now made even easier with an all new "common tasks" Dashboard that arranges all of the most frequently visited places in one readable, organized place. From this screen you may access the updated Reports tab where you may find detailed reports on the messages sent. New with InphoniteVoice 2012 however, is the ability to completely customize your reports to find the specific results you desire. The results you find can now be automatically sent directly to your printer or, if you want a more green approach, can be saved in a number of formats for you to access from your computer.

Another exciting feature of IV 2012 is the all-new, Inphonite-designed, Dynamic Call Detection system that was created specifically with our customers in mind. This elite detection system can skillfully and accurately adjust to what it hears on the line, ensuring your clients hear the entire message. Our Support Team will help you tweak your Detection system settings allowing you to be even more confident that your message is being received.

IV 2012 is meant to be a "run in the background" automated system that you do not have to worry about. In addition to automated reports, you can create calling exceptions and holiday rules so you can be sure that the correct messages are getting to the right people at the time you want them to and all you will have to do is check your reports.

Other new features include:

• Improved User Interface with Message Designer Tools, Rules Wizard, and new Dashboard
• Interactive Text Messaging
• Speech Recognition - enables voice responses instead of pressing numbers
• Lab Results Patient Portal - allows patients to securely and privately view lab/test results or other private messages
• 26 Text-to-Speech languages
• Custom Report Designer
• Enhanced Dynamic Call Detection - An Industry First!
• Holiday Exception Handling

Inphonite has worked hard to create an even more user-friendly system and would like to thank all of our customers for the feedback and feature requests that have helped us create this new and improved messaging system. For more information about the new features, pricing, or any other questions please contact our Sales Department at 800-350-7693.